Take the Damn Job

THERE'S AN INTERESTING article I want to link to, but I'll get to that in a moment. In my travels, I often find myself talking to aspirants; people who want to get into the writing room and want to work in TV but ... aren't sure. The worst kind of "aren't sure," is the person who seems to have a job on the hook. Maybe they've made a connection with the producer, but the material is something that they hate, or don't respond to very well.

Maybe it's the fact that the producer seems a little shady, or the show's a little shaky.

In any case, even though a few months back the only thing you could possibly imagine is having the chance to sign up to write on something, or to be a story coordinator and be close to writers in the room, but something, something now is holding you back...you just can't put your finger on it.

I'm telling you to take the job.

It's a funny business. It's full of charlatans and pretenders. There is definitely an A-list, B-list, C-list etc of everything -- Producers, Prodco's, Writers, Crew. Everybody wants to start with the A-list. And very few people get to start with the A-list.

And that's a good thing.

Have you ever noticed that when you watch a totally amazing movie, there's very little you can learn from it? You can steal, but not learn. We got talking the other day about Goodfellas in the writing room. Goodfellas is guycrack. You see Goodfellas on TV, you have to keep watching it. It's almost beyond your control.

But as a writer, Goodfellas has very little to teach you. It's wonderfully executed. A lot of elements have come together in exactly the right way. And that's why you can't learn from it. Now, if you watch a noir or a comedy that misfires in the final act, or that doesn't set its characters off the top correctly, the conversation you're going to have about what was wrong and how maybe it could have been fixed would have been far more illuminating than sitting around for the 100th time and running down all those awesome, favorite scenes from Goodfellas.

The fact is, the same thing holds in the writing workplace. Everybody has their disaster shows. Shows which are managed poorly, where the showrunner doesn't have a vision, or where toxic relations with the producers, basic criminality, insanity or mental illness makes a great product impossible. Or maybe the material just is what it is. Maybe it's beyond being "elevated," whatever that word might mean to you.

That's okay.

The idea is to get those shows under your belt early in your career. This serves a number of purposes:

1) It gives you stories.

There will come a day when you're grizzled and hopefully not old; still creatively vibrant, where you will be able to bond over stories over the abject insanity, mendacious behavior and sheer stupidity you saw back in the day. You will go into these bull sessions thinking that your story will be the craziest and most outrageous. This will be true about 10% of the time. It's also a great way to bond and connect with writers who have a few more years in on you. Maybe they've been at it a decade, or two, and you've been on the job five years, but you've both been in the shit.

2) It builds up your "never gonna do's."

Writing is largely self-taught. Writing professionally on TV is self-taught, too -- but there's also (hopefully) an element of mentorship involved. But a lot of the self-taught component is watching people behave spectacularly badly: scream at underlings, lie for no reason, reject wise counsel simply because it wasn't their idea... any and all of this kind of thing goes in your bank of experience and hopefully hardens your resolve to never, ever, ever repeat those mistakes when you somehow find yourself on a better show.

Again, watching a remarkably well-oiled machine, where the showrunner is always on the ball, the producers make things happen, and the writers support each other and turn drafts in on time doesn't really teach you very much at all. In fact, it can be a little traumatizing if you have that experience, and then go to your next show and find that it's an utter disaster. It's one thing to be in hell and imagine the shape of heaven; quite another to have been there and now to have to undure an unending flaming pitchfork in your butt.

3) It lets you get to know your fellow travellers.

Sometimes the people that you find yourself beside on those really bad shows are going to wind up being players. If you were in the shit with them, and showed grace and supportiveness, you never know. Somewhere else somebody wrote about the "Nash Bridges" effect -- how that show, even though it was a straight up-and-down, not very creative effort, nevertheless trained great writers who one day found themselves on LOST. Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars, Cupid) also cut his teeth on that show, I believe.

So even if the work is ass, the contacts may not be. Tell yourself that. It will help. A bit. At 3am. When you're rocking like a ball in the corner.

4) Only Assholes pick at early credits.

It's true. You think you're going to be forever stigmatized because you worked on a crappy show? By who? They've all worked on crappy shows too. I know two guys who were drivers -- pretty low on the crew. One's an international rock star now who's won Grammys. The other pitched a Director and wound up being a screenwriter who's now written several of the top grossing films of the last twenty years.

The other joke you hear writers make all the time is a version of this: they hold up their resumes and say, "oops, there it is! that's the sound of that credit falling off!" It's a happy, happy day when momentum allows you to 'retire' a less-than-desirable credit. But until that day, anybody who gives you stick for that show where you were a staff writer or story editor is just showing their utter and complete ignorance of the business.

If you achieve any degree of success -- and I mean ANY degree, whatsoever, the amount of jealousy and crazy-hate that's going to come your way will astound you. No, you did nothing to deserve it. Yes, they are small people and possibly disordered. Maybe they live with their moms, or hang out in IRC chatrooms or in Second Life or something. Fuck'em. The idea that one day someone might point at that early credit and judge you for it -- and that being a valid reason to not take a job -- THAT WILL PAY YOU TO WRITE -- is flat out, the craziest thing of all.

5) Nobody knows Anything: or the Inverse Rule of the Film/TV job.

Talk to the crew and they will tell you that when you're making it, there is usually just no way to tell whether it's going to be a good show or a bad show. Sometimes the best movies or TV shows are nightmares to work on. And sometimes the crummiest stuff will form friendships and memories that will carry you through a very long, long life. You just can never tell. So you may as well relax.

There's a show on my resume that I'm not particularly proud of, that was a pain in the ass at times, that exposed me to insanity and stress like you wouldn't believe. But it was fun. Lots of fun. And I made friends. And that's enough.

Now...all's that preamble to this. Imagine a show so packed with talent behind and in front of the camera, given such free rein by the network, that it just couldn't possibly fail.

Well, then you'd have the Dana Carvey Show, kids. With Carvey and Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert on screen, and Robert Smigel and Louis C.K. behind the scenes. It's out on DVD this Tuesday.

See? You just never, ever know.

So stop kvetching. Take the job.